


The Ice Around My Heart

by 221blackandwhitestripes



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anniversary, Character Death, Darkness, Death, Established Relationship, Future Fic, Heavy Angst, I Made Myself Cry, I cried writing this, I'm Sorry, Ice, Imagery, M/M, Oaths & Vows, Terminal Illnesses, This Is Sad, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 04:01:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14300325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221blackandwhitestripes/pseuds/221blackandwhitestripes
Summary: Noun:black iceA layer of ice so thin and clear, it appears invisible to the naked eye. You never know when it's there until the moment you're sliding across it and falling off a cliff.This is Oswald Cobblepot's black ice story.





	The Ice Around My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Today, I think I'll let this story speak for itself.

_Please break_  
_The ice around my heart._  
_This is our place,_  
_This is where we start._  
_We’re broken and cracked_  
_Ice shards on the floor._  
_But, soon, we will melt,_  
_And join together once more._

It doesn’t even register. How could it? This is the stuff for people in distant worlds, for nameless faces who don’t matter. Oswald isn’t supposed to be touched by this. He’s above pain, had washed it away a long time ago.

And yet, here they are.

 _You’re losing him,_ his mind whispers. _You’re losing him._

It’s when they’re back at the club, and Oswald has finished two-thirds of his whiskey, that he finally allows himself to think about what’s happening. It shouldn’t be real, it _can’t_ be. This isn’t supposed to happen. He lives in a world of blazes and gunfire. Not withering leaves and drying flowers.

After all the shit they’ve been through, countless deaths, losing everyone else they’ve ever loved, the fact that _this_ is how the story will end… Oswald refuses to believe it.

“Edward,” he begins, clearing his throat. “Ed, I… I know that- that this seems to-”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Edward growls. He’s been pacing back and forth ever since they arrived, running his hands through his hair then under his glasses to press against his eyes.

“Well, we’re going to have to!” Oswald snaps. He’s suddenly furious, an uncontrollable rage stirring dark like a black river within him. “This is real! This is happening! You can’t just keep pacing back and forth like it’s going to-”

_Leave._

“Oh, would you just shut up!” Ed snarls. “You think I don’t know? I’m not _deaf_ , Oswald, I heard the man!”

“Then fucking act like a grown up and **sit down**!” Oswald yells.

“Oh, is that really how you want to treat your dying husband?” Edward seethes, hissing at him like a wild thing. The tension in the air is thick, and it curls around Oswald’s shoulders like a heavy fog, clouding his cognitive thoughts until he is strung out and broken.

“How dare you?” Oswald shakes his head, the coldness in his heart seeping into his tone as he speaks quietly. “How _dare_ you?”

Edward doesn’t say anything, just glares. Oswald almost doesn’t recognize him.

_You’re losing him._

Oswald turns back to the bar, taking another sip of his whiskey in an attempt to drown the cloying thoughts in his head.

Back at the hospital, things had been different. They’d waffled together, asking, again and again, if the doctor was _sure_ , because this couldn’t be right, not after everything they’ve had to push through up until now. But the doctor had just smiled at them pityingly, handing them a pile of papers that detailed exactly what was happening to Ed and how long the process would take.

But now, it feels like they’re enemies again, revisiting the days when they’d snarl in each other’s faces, strip the other of their worth with litanies of insults.

Oswald doesn’t want that. He wants the man who curls against his back while they sleep, the man who hums while in the kitchen, the man whose smile can bring him home.

_You’re losing him._

Oswald doesn’t want to be alone.

“Look, maybe- maybe we could get a second opinion?” Oswald tries, still staring down at the glossy black bar as he tries to gather his thoughts.

“You think?” Ed asks, his voice raspy and a little bit broken, setting off unwanted pangs in Oswald’s chest.

“Of course!” Oswald affirms with a cheer he doesn’t feel as he turns on his barstool to face Edward. “What’s _one_ doctor’s diagnosis? There are tons of medical professionals dotted around this country, a great deal with more training and knowledge than that halfwit could ever have.”

“Are you sure?” Ed asks, looking at him with this swirling _emptiness_ in his eyes that swamps Oswald immediately with the need to fill him with all the love and adoration in the world.

_You’re losing him._

“I’m positive,” he confirms. “Whatever the price, we’re going to fix this.”

So they try.

It’s weeks of phone calls, explaining Edward’s symptoms, again and again, weeks of bribery, extortion, threats, blackmail, only to be told, in the end, the same thing: Edward’s going to die. There’s no stalling it, no stopping it, no cure. His brain will just keep wasting away until he’s lost everything. And, one day, he’ll forget how to breathe and that will be it.

But Oswald can’t accept that.

“What do you _mean_ there’s nothing you can do? There has to be _something_! Some pills he can take, some untested method you’re all hesitant to try, _something_.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but there really is-”

“No, you don’t understand!” Oswald yells into the phone, his grip tightening on it to the point where it might just crack under the strain. “I am **not** going to let my husband die. Do you hear me? I won’t allow it. We have gone through too much for him to… I just- I won’t let him!”

“Mr Cobblepot, I’m sorry, but-” Oswald hangs up on him, chucking his phone at the wall, and he’s satisfied when it splits open and falls in shards to the floor.

“Oswald?” It’s Ed, and Oswald turns to regard him as the man steps into view. He’s pale and clammy, and Oswald’s hands itch with the need to wrap him in his arms and comfort him, make him feel warm and safe instead of so broken and lost.

“Ed? Are you okay?” Oswald asks, walking over and taking Ed’s sweaty hands in his. He doesn’t know where the gentleness comes from, it seems like everything thing that was ever soft about himself has turned to stone. But it’s different with Ed, like the cold ice frosting over his heart can’t touch the spot reserved only for him.

“I- yes, I- I think so.” Edward swallows thickly and Oswald traces its movements down his neck, glancing up again to see Ed peering at him with wide eyes. “Who- who was on the telephone?”

“A doctor,” Oswald replies. Something watery and dark is swimming in his stomach and Oswald doesn’t know how to explain the sense of slow-dripping dread other than intuition.

“A doctor?” Edward raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Why? Are you not feeling well?”

Oswald drowns in his head, black water filling his lungs until they scream for air, and Oswald doesn’t know how he can be drowning and burning at the same time. Incessant tears prick his eyes, stinging like paper cuts, and Oswald has to swallow and blink as he realizes that, yes, this is real, this is happening. He is losing everything, his whole world.

 _You’re losing him,_ his mind whispers. _You’re losing him._

Ed just blinks at him, waiting.

“Actually, it was for you,” Oswald answers, and his throat is clogged, the words he really wants to say seeming to be frozen in his throat, destined to burn there for eternity.

“For me? Why?”

_Please, stop. Just stop this. Look at me with those intelligent, sparking eyes, tell me about the inner-workings of rats or stalactites, remind me what it’s like to breathe. Don’t leave me in shards on the floor again._

Edward’s still waiting for an answer.

“It doesn’t matter.” It stings his throat and breaks his brain, but he pushes through nonetheless. “What time is it? I have the sudden desire to take you to bed.”

Edward smiles. “It’s seven-thirty. But I suppose you can take me to bed anyway.”

“Good.” Oswald leans up and presses their lips together, and it’s still the same, Ed still pushes back against him, still hums against his lips. It still feels like perfect diamonds in a coal dust world.

Oswald doesn’t know why, but he misses it. It should be impossible to miss something he has, but he does. And it’s okay because these little paradoxes, the unsolvable conundrums, are so _Ed_ that Oswald can barely breathe with it.

“Let’s go upstairs.” Oswald takes his hand and they go, making their way down the club’s winding back corridors to the staircase. Edward still helps him up the stairs, and Oswald’s frozen heart is a little warmer because of it.

They’re not the same as they once were. It’s not a race to get to their room, to tear off clothes in search of flesh, kissing down each other’s skin until they’re both gasping and burning with pleasure.

Now, it’s Edward’s gentle hands undoing the buttons on Oswald’s waistcoat, his lingering smile as he rubs Oswald ankles, hands moving up to massage his calves, then his thighs. It’s Oswald’s eyelashes fluttering helplessly, his hands snagging on Edward’s shoulders to pull him into a brutal kiss that sparks of the times of rage and terror that scratched at their hearts. But it mellows, sweetens like a melody until they’re sinking into one another like marshmallows into molten chocolate.

Oswald’s a little more desperate this time, hands grasping for purchase on Edward’s skin, hips frantic instead of lazy, not bothering to muffle his cries like he usually does and instead, basking in the feeling of Ed against him, moaning and gasping without remorse.

When it’s over, they remain lying there, together, legs intertwined, chests pressed flush against each other. Oswald can’t breathe, he’s gasping for air, and he’s not sure if it’s from the afterglow or the fact that he feels like he’s losing this. That this could be the last time they are ever this close in this way. He wants to hold on forever.

“I love it when you do that,” Ed mumbled against Oswald’s skin drowsily.

“Do what?” Oswald asks. He can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe.

“Lose control. It’s sexy.” Edward shifts in his arms and Oswald’s hold on him tightens.

“Oswald? You need to let me up or that’s gonna dry.” He gestured vaguely at the mess on their stomachs.

“Leave it.” It’s awful and broken, and Oswald’s definitely showing his hand, but he can’t let Ed wipe away the evidence of _this_. “I like the mess.”

Edward gives him a weird look but complies, snuggling into Oswald’s arms once more with a contented sigh.

Oswald can’t _breathe_.

“Tell me a riddle?” Oswald asks, desperately needing _something_ to fill the growing void of silence in his head.

Edward smirks. “Young, I am tall. Old, I am short. I love to glow. What am I?”

Oswald allows himself a small smile. “A candle.” He answers simply. Then, again, _silence_ , a dark force tumbling and weaving into Oswald’s soul, and he needs to try to make it stop. “Tell me another.”

“What has no hands but grips you tight and squeezes out your grit? What whispers warnings in your ear and makes you lose all wit? What has no fangs yet bites down hard and causes valors to bleed? What makes the indomitable spirit of a man finally concede?” The words are strange, almost melodic, they pull Oswald in like a churning abyss, capturing him, ensnaring him, and Oswald is helpless beneath its gaze.

“I… I don’t kn-”

“Fear.” Cold, like ice water, the word is arctic, and Oswald won’t be surprised if he suddenly begins to see his breath with the sudden chill in the air. “Oswald, I’m afraid.”

The ice inside them is cracking, melting, wasting away, and the frozen tears suddenly flow like rivers, both of them clutching each other as they sob and mourn for a future that can never be.

No wrinkled, mottled hands to clutch his own. No wheezing breaths or clicking hips. No soft smiles or hoarse laughs. No dying in each other’s arms.

They’ve lost their forever.

Once the sobbing has died and the hysteria has depleted, they continue to hold each other, sniffling softly as they kiss the salt from each other’s cheeks.

“Oswald.” Ed’s voice breaks their melancholic silence. “Oswald, you need to stop calling doctors.”

Oswald breathes deeply through his nose, letting it out slowly. “Okay.”

“Promise?” Ed insists, arms tightening around Oswald's shoulders and waist.

“I promise.”

Oswald doesn’t call the doctors again. When he gets a new phone, he doesn’t try adding their old contacts, just keeping Ed’s and a few others instead.

Oswald is slowly releasing himself to the inevitable.

He still hates the world, hates that it continues to turn on its fucking axis, hates watching everything go on and on and on. Hates the people passing by with barely a glance in their direction. Can’t they see that something’s wrong? Do they not feel their blood curdling, darkness in their hearts raging in defiance because something is happening that _shouldn’t_ be happening?

He lives in a broken city which doesn’t understand. Or perhaps it does and simply knows that their destruction isn’t the first, nor the last.

This happens all the time. It shouldn’t, but it does.

There was a time when Oswald and death had been friends, flirting and mischievous as they regarded each other behind lowered eyelids. He’d practically greeted it with a smile as he sunk to the bottom of a river, only to be pulled out just before the darkness swallowed him. He wonders what measure of betrayal he must have committed against death in order to invite it back to his door, not for himself but for the only living, breathing man he truly loves.

It isn’t fair.

One day, one of Gordon’s minions shows up at the club, sniffing around like a sick hound and asking questions. Oswald sends him away with a bullet in his leg and an arm bent the wrong way.

It isn’t enough.

Less than twenty-four hours later, Gordon himself shows up his door, snarling and yelling like the unreformed IED case he is.

“You don’t get it,” Oswald tells him, and maybe his words are slurred, and maybe he’s hanging onto his whiskey for dear life because he hasn’t seen Ed in over seventy-two hours, and the man could be dead and gone forever, and he keeps losing that man over and over again, and his fucking brain won’t shut up, and Oswald thinks he might be dying as well.

“Don’t get what?” Gordon spits. He’s a wild thing, a rabid wolf, navy blue and boring while Oswald’s eye is constantly searching for emerald green and wacky smiles.

“He’s dying.” Oswald’s giggling and he can’t stop, it’s breathless and hilarious. Tears roll down his cheeks and he’s a snow-capped mountain during an avalanche, destructive and dangerous as he sips his drink and fingers his handgun.

_You’re losing him._

“Who?” This world is so thick, and Gordon’s the thickest, looking at him through a haze of water, and maybe all the ice has melted from Oswald’s bones under the warm whiskey and burning anger, drenching him, sluicing him. He swimming until he’s drowning, and he can’t help it when his giggles break into sobs.

“Who do you think?”

Gordon must understand because he lowers his gun and gives him this _look_ , sad and reproachful. It’s too much and Oswald is suddenly snarling at him to get away, to fucking leave, goddamnit, and when he does and it isn’t enough, he yells for everyone else to go too, leaving the place as empty and dark as his insides.

It’s well past midnight when his phone finally rings.

“Oswald?” The crackling word is too broken for Oswald’s liking and he wants to crawl through the receiver and bring the man on the other side back into his arms.

“Edward? What are you… Are you alright? Where are you?” He needs the man like oxygen, and he’s so close, Oswald thinks that if he tries hard enough, he might actually find it in himself to breathe.

He can’t breathe.

“I’m fine, I promise. I just… I just got a little lost. Or am a little lost, rather.”

Oswald swallows down an overpowering wave of feelings that demand to be vomited up and, while he tastes bile, he holds it together.

“Do you see any street signs? Any familiar buildings?” He prompts, not letting his voice crack. He’s suddenly sober, and Oswald doesn’t know how alcohol can work like that, but he thanks the stars that it does, because he needs a clear head right now if he wants to breathe again.

“Um, yes, there is a sign.” Edward’s voice fades under the blood pounding in Oswald’s ears, and he strains to hear him even as the ground beneath him shakes and rumbles.

“Good, what does it say?” He needs to breathe, needs to breathe, needs to breathe.

“Road works ahead.”

Any other day, Oswald would roll his eyes and sigh, exasperation chipping off him like stray snowflakes. Or perhaps he'd laugh, shoulders shaking as he throws his head back in delight. But now, Oswald’s gut twists and heaves, and he’s half running, half staggering into the thankfully nearby bathroom to vomit his guts out.

“Oswald? Oswald, are you okay? Oswald?” Ed’s harried voice repeats, the tone twinging in Oswald’s ear.

“Fine,” Oswald lies and wipes his mouth. “Can you…. Can you walk around a bit? See if there are any street signs or something?”

“...Okay,” Edward replies hesitantly, so unsure that Oswald thinks he might be sick again.

 _You’re losing him,_ his mind whispers. _You’re losing him._

“There’s one. It says… Purpose Avenue,” Ed answers, not seeming sure at all. “That… That can’t be right.”

Oswald blanches. That’s right around the corner from Cherry’s.

“Edward, you’re in the narrows. Stay where you are, I’m going to come and fetch you.” Oswald races to call his driver, demanding the solemn girl ignore the speed limit, knowing she understands when he says “It’s for Ed.”

It seems to be his answer for everything these days.

They stop at the end of the street, and Oswald is so close to his oxygen, he can _taste_ it. He walks down Purpose Avenue, eyes searching with an undue focus for the man who’ll let him breathe.

There’s a ball of green huddled on a doorstep and Oswald inhales finally, and stills.

“Ed?” The man’s dark brown eyes are wide and wet behind his glasses, and Oswald aches and aches. “Come, let’s get you back home.”

Edward curls into him during the drive, head on Oswald’s chest and arms around his waist. Oswald presses kiss after kiss into his hair, whispering “it’s fine, your fine, we’re fine, everything's going to be okay.”

 _Lies,_ his mind hisses fiercely. Oswald wonders when he’d begun to break.

“Tell me a riddle?” Oswald asks.

“The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?” Oswald smiles.

“Footsteps.” He answers.

“Correct.” Edward says, voice muffled as he presses his face further into Oswald’s shirt, and it’s barely a whisper, but Oswald still hears it when he says “Please don’t follow in my footsteps.”

Oswald pretends he didn’t hear because he wishes he hadn’t.

They shake together through the night, their bodies quaking, searching each other for warmth. But ice doesn’t burn hot, and so they fall asleep frozen.

Oswald almost hopes that they can stay that way, suspended in time for all of eternity.

Their following weeks are shipwrecking storms, roiling seas threatening to obliterate them as Ed slips further away. Oswald spends the days with Ed clasped in one hand and a glass in the other. He forever swallows.

“Tell me a riddle?” He asks, again and again, every night. “Tell me a riddle.”

It’s always different, always special. It’s the man he loves.

“What comes down but never goes up?”

“Rain.”

“What gets wetter the more it dries?”

“A towel.”

“What passes before the sun, but makes no shadow?”

“The wind.”

“ What’s a gift beyond measure, that is of course - if given with pleasure, not taken by force?”

“A Kiss.” And Oswald kisses him again and again until they’re both breathless and sated, water pools with floating icebergs, shipwrecking and destructive as they gaze into each other’s eyes.

But it doesn’t stop the trap door beneath them from opening, the darkness surrounding them like storm clouds as they battle against Ed’s chained up mind.

“I’m… I’m… What’s the word, when you need food and your stomach hurts?”

“Hungry.”

“She looked so surprised, and then she… then she…”

“Laughed?”

“Yes, laughed.”

_You’re losing him._

“Tell me a riddle?”

“I… I… I can’t think of one.”

_You’re losing him._

It’s almost ironic, because there was a time when Oswald had pretended this was real, had displayed Edward’s frozen body in the middle of his club and told a false, mocking tale of ‘poor, dear Ed’, the man with the brain disease no one could fix.

Perhaps karma is real and now it’s fate who’s mocking him.

Perhaps he deserves the judgment.

It’s when he thinks these dark, black ice thoughts that an idea forms in his mind. Hope sparks like springtime rain in his chest, and when he calls Victor Fries, he actually breathes.

“I’m not asking for a favour,” he says through the receiver, voice deadly serious. “I’m asking you to save my life by saving my husband.”

“There’s no guarantee-”

“Please.”

The man agrees, and Oswald knows that Victor understands, another iceman who can never be melted, his ice queen taken from him long ago, never to return.

He needs redemption.

Edward has a panic attack. He’s screaming and crying, begging Oswald to “please, save me, save me”.

Oswald tells him he can.

With tear stained cheeks, Ed agrees.

They set a date. It two days after their anniversary. Ed wants to renew their vows before he goes. Oswald agrees.

They plan the ceremony together, small but beautiful, and Oswald’s throat is tight as Edward’s words stumble through his explanations of what food he’d like and the people he wants to invite. Oswald lets him choose.

_You’re losing him._

Soon, they’re standing in a room, holding hands and smiling. Edward has to hold a piece of paper to remember. Oswald doesn’t.

"You are my lover and my teacher. You are my model and my accomplice. You are my true counterpart. I will love you, hold you and honour you. I will respect you, encourage you and cherish you. In health and sickness, through sorrow and success.” Oswald’s crying, his soul wretched and weak as he sobs the words out, and it doesn’t matter, none of it does, because Ed smiles at him and wipes his cheek with his thumb, and Oswald can _breathe._

“For all the days of my life."

Edward unfolds his paper and Oswald doesn’t say a word.

“I overheard you once say that walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light. You, my dear Oswald, are my man in the dark. I will forever love you and your twisted soul. I will forever cherish your knife edge eyes. And if you ever change, I will follow you on the winding paths you take. Because I love you. Until death do us part.” Ed looks up. “And even after that.”

People clap, but Oswald doesn’t listen, drowning in his own pounding blood as he and Ed kiss and _kiss_ , spirits tangling together like tree roots.

They are shards on the floor, razor sharp with hard edges. But, pieced together, they make something whole. They’re each other’s proof that they’re not unloveable.

Oswald can breathe.

They lay waste to each other in their bed, taking each other apart in the same way they had this day all those years ago. They breathe frosted gasps, their eyelashes flutter like snowflakes, they scratch and shiver like icicles. They are so close to being shattered.

 _You’re losing him,_ his mind whispers. _You’re losing him._

“What do you want to do today?” Oswald asks in the frosted morning light.

“Let’s just stay here,” Ed whispers. “I wanna stay with you.”

Oswald gulps down his _why’_ s and _you can’t do this to me’_ s and just whispers “okay.”

They hold each other through a thunderstorm, tell stories, stroke each other’s hair.

“Do you remember the day we were in the snow and you slipped and fell on your face? Some penguin you are!” Laughter, lifting them, bursting them, a cascade of snow, they’re setting each other free.

“You’re the man who once offered me a glass of water with a _straw_.”

“You were injured!”

“I have never, and will never, drink from a _straw_.” They’re soaring up, blue stars in the sky, too caught up in each other’s light to notice the planet beneath.

“Do you remember our first kiss?”

A smile.

“It was raining. I had just yelled at you to go back inside because you didn’t have a coat on.”

“And I told you it didn’t matter because you would keep me warm.”

“I suppose I did?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Didn’t stop you from catching that cold, though.”

Oswald laughs. He’s high, buzzing, Ed is his drug.

“No, it didn’t.”

They spend hours just kissing, long and slow until their jaws ache and everything’s uncomfortable, and they really should stop, but they carry on anyway. How could they stop?

Oswald’s the one who tells the riddle this time.

“What’s yours but you can never hold it?”

“Oswald, I- I don’t-”

“My heart.”

They’re desperate, then, trying to hold on, because this is the last time, truly. The very last time.

 _You’re losing him,_ his mind whispers. It’s right.

The next day, their last day, they walk the streets together. Gotham is their home, its dark paths the same as the scars on their skin, its crookedness as broken as Oswald’s leg, its darkness like the outpouring of their souls.

They point and reminisce, more tales of days spent together as they walk and walk. Oswald’s leg aches more than it did the day it was broken. He doesn’t care.

Ed opens his mouth. Another tale.

_Please, don’t ever forget me._

When they’re back home, they fall asleep in each other’s arms, breathing each other in. If Ed’s oxygen, Oswald prays he’s not carbon dioxide.

When Ed wakes, they both know it won’t be long.

They go downstairs and Victor’s already there with a bitter smile and his ice-gun in hand.

Oswald’s not ready to let go.

“Ed, please, my darling, please, I love you, I love you.” Words spill, Oswald’s voice cracks and melts and they’re both crying.

“I love you too, Oswald. I love you.”

They’re cold, shaking, breaking in one another’s gaze.

He doesn’t want to let go.

Ed tries to break the hold on his hands but Oswald catches him by the sleeve, desperately pulling as he opens his mouth to speak. But no words come, only a cracking, garbled mess of syllables and Edward smiles at him gently, kisses his hand, and slowly pushes him away.

“I’ll see you again, soon.” It’s a lie and they know it, but the words still need to be said.

“I know. I love you.”

_Please, remember._

“I love you too.” A frosty smile and Oswald can’t bear it but he doesn’t dare look away.

“Are you ready?” Victor asks. Oswald had forgotten he was standing there and quickly moves to give him space.

“Yes, we’re ready.” Victor gets into position and raises his gun.

“Are you comfortable?” He asks.

“Yes.” Ed's staring and Oswald can't look away.

“Okay.”

When they speak, it's together, words tumbling over one another, a roaring symphony as their litanies combine, the meaning abundantly clear. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Ed is frozen with the words still on his lips.

They put him in a different case, a stronger one, a safer one. Glass over ice, everything clear, cloudy and cold.

They don't put him on display.

Oswald spends the rest of the day with his forehead pressed against the glass, sobbing out the same words again and again.

“I love you. I love you.”

Ed's ice is cold but Oswald's heart is colder.

He falls asleep against it, remembering Ed's warm eyes and warmer embrace. It doesn't melt his heart like it used to.

In the following weeks, person after person comes storming in, demanding orders, a plan, _something_. They're all faceless, they don't matter.

“The world is going to shit,” they say.

“Let it,” Oswald replies.

Eventually, they all leave.

Other people are kinder, bringing food and water and whiskey when he demands it. Oswald is surprised to see Victor's face more than once.

“I loved him.” He tells them. “I love him still.” _Will it ever stop? God, if I could have anything in the world, it would be to **stop this.**_

Six weeks in, he leaves the room because someone's playing an Amy Winehouse song in the club and it reminds him of Ed.

He drinks himself into a black hole and wakes up sticky, on the floor, in a pile of his own vomit.

Somehow, it makes things easier. Somehow, things are a little better.

He goes outside, he works, constantly finding new, innovative ways to literally get away with murder.

When people ask, he says that he's feeling better, that he's pulling through. He doesn't tell them that all the oxygen in the air is frozen in a block of ice, and he can't _breathe._

It's almost been a year when the iceberg lounge is attacked.

Oswald's finger pulls his pistol’s trigger, again and again, his other hand occupied with holding up his bulletproof umbrella.

It was an anniversary present. Oswald is _ice_.

He searches for an escape, edging around the room in an attempt to get to the door, the one that leads to the man he loves, his oxygen.

He stumbles forward into a gangster instead. Pain registers in his abdomen, radiating out, and then his fingers are pulling the trigger again, and the man falls to the floor.

Stumbling now, Oswald makes it the rest of the way, slamming the door shut behind him.

He collapses against Edward's case and _breathes._

It suddenly occurs to him that pain in his abdomen still remains, and when he presses his hand to the front of his waistcoat, it comes back slick with blood. It's bright and luscious like the roses he'd bought Ed as a thank you for letting him stay with him all those years ago.

 _Oh,_ he thinks, _I'm going to die._

There's a button, an emergency one. With a press, it will melt Ed's cage, releasing him. Oswald has a moment of selfishness as he actually considers it; letting Ed out so he can die in the other man's arms like he's _supposed_ to, melting into a puddle together.

It's fleeting and horrible and Oswald pushes it from his mind. Leaning against the glass will have to be enough.

Blood pours out, liquid and dangerous. He's melting, but there are no chunks of ice this time, nothing to keep him afloat.

 _Oh dear,_ he thinks, _I'm drowning._

He can't hold himself up anymore and he finds himself slipping down to lay on his back on the floor.

The world keeps turning. Oswald doesn't think he's on it anymore.

Oswald's head lolls to the side. His eyes track up the glass, through the ice, meeting Ed's empty gaze.

“I love you,” he whispers and smiles.

The world turns white and, from one moment to the next, he's gone.

Another snowflake, fallen to the ground.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry.  
> Feel free to yell at me in the comments.


End file.
